Virginia
For the ship, see Virginia (Ironclad) The Commonwealth of Virginia is a Southeastern state in the South Atlantic Region in the United States of America. It is bordered by Maryland and Washington, D.C. to the north and east, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, North Carolina and Tennessee to the south, Kentucky to the west, and West Virginia to the north and west. It is named in honor of Elizabeth I of England, who was known as the Virgin Queen because she never married. The Virginia Colony was the first part of the Americas to be continuously inhabited by colonists from its founding as a European colony up to the American Revolution. Virginia was one of the epicenters of the Revolution; many of the country's early political and military leaders called Virginia home. It maintained its prominence for much of the country's early history after independence. Virginia joined the Confederate States during the American Civil War; Richmond became the CSA's capital. Part of the state counter-seceded in 1863, forming the Union state of West Virginia. Virginia has had more US Presidents born in it than any other state. Eight presidents were born here. They are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson. Virginia in A Different Flesh Virginia was the site of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in North America. The site of the colony was not conducive to agriculture, and the presence of sims made life very difficult for the colonists. Nevertheless, the colony survived, and eventually, even thrived. In 1738, Virginia joined other English colonies in breaking away from the mother country and forming the Federated Commonwealths of America. Portsmouth was Virginia's capital and largest city. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Virginia's economy came from plantations worked by sims. Black humans were kept as slaves on these plantations until the general abolition in the early 19th century, an accomplishment which resulted from the legal decision reached in Portsmouth in 1804, regarding an escaped slave named Jeremiah Gillen. Virginia in The Disunited States of America In the alternate where the United States failed because they couldn't agree on a constitution, Virginia was one of several independent countries located in North America. It was a constitutional republic, with the House of Burgesses as its legislative body, and The Consul was the head of state. Richmond remained the national capital. Like many of the former slave-holding states, Virginia was sharply divided along racial lines, with blacks kept as second-class citizens. Negroes had nonetheless launched rebellions several times in the country's past. This racial hierarchy created a substantial paranoia in white Virginia. Consequently, while Virginia was a republic, many liberties and freedoms were not as sacred as in the home timeline's United States. In this alternate, Virginia's borders included both the home timeline's Virginia and West Virginia, as there was no American Civil War to cause the partition. Virginia's currency was the pound, which was divided into 20 shillings and a shilling was further subdivided into 12 pence. This subdivision was still used in Great Britain and some eastern North American states who were using the pound in this alternate timeline. Like some other states, Virginia still used the imperial system of measurement. In 2097, after a period of escalating tensions with its neighbor Ohio, Ohio and Virginia declared war. A few weeks into the war, Ohio disseminated a virus among the Virginians and followed through with a ground invasion. Virginia took the brunt of the fighting; Ohio forces took Virginia towns near their shared border and Negroes (armed by Ohio) in Virginia launched a rebellion. The virus and the rebellion stymied Virginia's efforts to meet the Ohio advance. However, after a few weeks of fighting, the war was ended by a truce. A very small number of Virginia whites saw the war as a wake-up call for the country to re-evaluate its racial hierarchy. Covertly, Crosstime Traffic helped to finance these moderates, who gained seats in the House of Burgesses. Virginia in "Election Day" Virginia was the only southern state to go to Democrat John F. Kennedy Jr. in the 2016 presidential election.Alternate Peace, loc. 613, ebook. Virginia in The Guns of the South Virginia was the primary scene of the astonishing turnaround in the fortunes of the Confederacy in the early months of 1864. Commanding General Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia was determined to fight on as long as he could, but faced the near-certainty of eventual defeat, with overwhelming Union forces pushing into Virginia from the north, and a powerful Union navy threatening Virginia by sea. The appearance of the time-traveling Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging members from 2014, led by Andries Rhoodie, changed the situation by providing the Confederates with tens of thousands of mysterious new automatic rifles called AK-47s. With this new advantage, General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia routed the Army of the Potomac in the Battle of the Wilderness, pushed the US forces back out of Virginia and eventually reached Washington City, ending the Second American Revolution. In the aftermath of President Lincoln's reluctant recognition of the Confederacy, Confederate leaders agreed to the US retaining West Virginia, whose inhabitants plainly did not want to be part of the Confederacy. The two Virginias thus settled into a new post-war world, members of two different countries, with Richmond, Virginia housing both the state and Confederate capital. In the first post-war Confederate presidential election in 1867, Virginia solidly supported Virginian native and Confederate Party candidate Lee against the rival Patriot Party candidate, Nathan Bedford Forrest.The Guns of the South, appendices. The state had 13 electoral votes during the election. Following the election, Richmond was the scene of the attempted coup and assassination by the Confederates' erstwhile allies from the future. In the aftermath, Virginia was at the center of the Lee Administration's efforts to use the captured future technology to establish the Confederacy as a major world power. Virginians overwhelmingly supported Lee's project of gradually emancipating the slaves. Virginia in "Lee at the Alamo" Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, in response to President Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers to halt southern secession. This was despite the fact that two of her citizens, Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee and Major George Thomas, had defended U.S. property at the Alamo in Texas from a pro-Confederate siege from February to March, 1861. For their part, Thomas saw himself as an American first, and continued to serve the Union cause. Lee required more direct persuasion from President Lincoln himself. Lee agreed to continue fighting in the west, but refused any position in the Union Army that might bring him into conflict with his fellow Virginians on the battlefield. Virginia in "Powerless" Old Dominion Province was part of Southern Confederated People's Republic. It was known for its quality bourbon, which was only available to the upper echelons of the nomenklatura of the various socialist states of the world, including those of the West Coast People's Democratic Republic.Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction September/October, 2018. Virginia in Southern Victory . Territory north of this boundary was given to the US state of West Virginia.]] Virginia joined the Confederacy during the War of Secession. Its state capital, Richmond, became the national capital. Politically and industrially, Virginia was the Confederacy's most important state. Virginia was a critical front during the Great War. Some of the fiercest fighting was on the Roanoke Front. When the Confederacy lost, most of northern Virginia (north of the Rappahannock River) was annexed to the U.S. state of West Virginia. This placed the CSA's capital of Richmond less than 50 miles from the new international boundary. In the late 1930s, the annexed parts of North Virginia were the scene of guerrilla fighting and civil disobedience campaigns waged by local Freedom Party militants, who hoped to get the US to cede this territory as it agreed with regard to Kentucky and the State of Houston, carved out of Texas after the Great War. This hope proved false, however, as US President Al Smith considered retention of North Virginia as vital for defense of Washington DC, still the de jure capital of the US even if the de facto capital continued on in Philadelphia. Instead of giving up the territory, Smith authorized severe repression against North Virginia's recalcitrant population. Smith's refusal to give up North Virginia was one of the pretexts used by CS President Jake Featherston to launch his 1941 invasion of the US. Early in the Second Great War, Virginia was again a strategic target of the US, as Jake Featherston steadfastly refused to leave Richmond. Also during the war, the pro-Confederate population of Northern Virginia hoped in vain for an invasion of their area, with Featherston and his generals preferring to direct their forces elsewhere. In the wake of Operation Blackbeard, the U.S. military turned to a counterattack in northern Virginia in 1941. The attack, led by General Daniel MacArthur, was a failure in the short-term. The black population of Richmond had an advance warning of Featherston's intention to ship them all to extermination camps and make the city "free of Blacks". They staged a major uprising and fought valiantly and persistently, but were eventually overwhelmed. Though the US planes coming over the city give the rebels some support, the US failed to make of the Richmond uprising a strategic asset, and the eventual US victory came too late to do any good to the Richmond blacks. After the Confederate advance was stopped and destroyed at the Battle of Pittsburgh in 1943, and Irving Morrell invaded the Confederacy, MacArthur was given another opportunity to invade Virginia in 1944. This time, Virginia fell in short order. The Confederate superbomb project was located at Washington University, at Lexington, Virginia. The project was able to complete North America's first bomb, which was used against Philadelphia. In response, the U.S. destroyed the Virginia city of Newport News with its own superbomb. After eighty years in the Confederate States of America, Virginia- now much-reduced in size by repeated annexations of land into West Virginia- was put under indefinite U.S. military occupation. Like the rest of the defeated Confederate States, it was held in political limbo, forced back inside the Union's borders but given neither representation nor the legal status of an actual state. Virginia in ''The Two Georges'' In the aftermath of the Seven Years' War, Virginia was one of a number of colonies that chafed under unrepresentative direct British rule. However, a new arrangement was peacefully negotiated forming the North American Union. Thus, Virginia was one of the oldest Provinces of the NAU. It held the distinction of being the birthplace and lifelong home of George Washington, the esteemed citizen who had led the delegation to the Court of St. James and reached a compromise with King George III himself, securing the Colonies' loyalty to the British Empire. In 1995, Roland Oliver was a Crown Prosecutor for the province. Victoria, the capital of the NAU, was located in northern Virginia. Literary Comment Along with OTL Virginia, the NAU's Virginia also includes West Virginia.Map The Two Georges, frontispiece. See Also *Parthenia Province, a province in the Kingdom of Detina in The War Between the Provinces series that is based on the state of Virginia. References }} Virginia Virginia Virginia Virginia Category:Election Day Virginia Category:Lee at the Alamo Category:Powerless Virginia Category:North American Union Provinces Category:Countries in North America (Fictional Work)